This invention provides improved construction and easier operability of polishing heads useful for positioning a substrate, in particular, a semiconductor substrate, on the surface of a polishing pad. Such heads also provide a controllable biasing, or loading, between the surface of the substrate and the polishing surface.
A typical substrate polishing apparatus positions a surface of a substrate against a polishing surface. Such a polishing configuration is useful for polishing the substrate after it has been sliced from a boule (single crystal), to provide smoothly planar, parallel, front and back sides thereon. It is also useful for polishing a surface of the substrate on which one or more film layers have been deposited, where polishing is used to planarize the surface of the substrate on which one or more film layers have been deposited. A slurry having both chemically reactive and abrasive components is used in conjunction with the positioning of the film layer surface against a moving polishing surface to provide the desired polishing. This is known as chemical mechanical polishing.
A typical wafer polishing apparatus employs a carrier, or polishing head, to hold the substrate and position the film layer surface of the substrate against a polishing surface. The polishing surface is typically provided by placing a large polishing pad, typically as large as one meter in diameter, on a massive rotatable platen. The platen is driven by a motor to rotate the polishing pad and thus provide relative motion between the pad and the film layer surface of the substrate. As the pad rotates, it tends to pull the substrate out of the carrier. Therefore, the carrier also typically includes a recess within which the substrate is received. This recess is commonly provided by extending a retainer downwardly from the substrate receiving surface of the carrier positioned adjacent to, and extending circumferentially around, the edge of the substrate. The apparatus also provides a means for positioning the carrier over the polishing pad and biasing the carrier towards the pad to load the substrate against the pad, and a drive means for providing rotational, vibratory or oscillatory motion to the carrier.
An example of a polishing head having a retaining ring is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,205,082, by Shendon et al. which discloses pressurized diaphragm arrangement which urges a wafer carrier and wafer retainer toward a polishing pad.
In some carrier head configurations, the force urging the retaining ring toward the polishing pad is dependent on the predetermined spring constant of a circular leaf spring and its compression. The spring-loaded retaining rings are subject to bending and torsional deflection due to the spring configuration which does not provide a continuous contact force but provides a series of point loads, clamping the ring to the polishing pad. The retaining ring bends and deflects because it is allowed to flex between these point loads. This flexing can cause variation in the clearance between the ring and pad which affects the depth of slurry that passes under the ring, and it also affects the pad compression adjacent to the edge of the wafer. Variations in the depth of polishing slurry and in pad compression adjacent to the edge of the wafer can cause differential polishing of the wafer to the detriment of polishing uniformity.
The object in each head configuration is to provide a fixture which will uniformly polish the wafer across its full width without unacceptable variations in the thickness of the wafer. These prior art configurations as described can introduce polishing variations due to bladder edge effects, non-uniformly distributed force pressing the wafer to the polishing pad, and retaining ring deflections which require close and frequent monitoring to assure satisfactory polishing results.